THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has said it has no capacity to service 20 000 stands at one go following an announcement by the Government that it was planning to set a youth suburb in the city. Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Cde Saviour Kasukuwere last week said he was going to order BCC to avail an initial 300hectares of land in the city for the construction of a new suburb.

He said his ministry was going to ensure that servicing of the stands and construction of houses would begin by the end of the year to ease accommodation woes among the youth.

However, Bulawayo Mayor Councillor Martin Moyo, has said that the city did not have the money nor the capacity to service such a large number of stands. The mayor said although the parent ministry has not yet communicated officially over the matter there were a number of issues that needed to be addressed first like the funding model or whether the Government will assist in the project.

“At the moment we are struggling to service just 3 000 stands a year and I don’t see how we will be able to do 20 000. The truth is, simply we do not have the capacity to do such a huge project and we will raise this when the ministry officially communicates to us. Besides if such a directive comes through it goes against a number of our policies which will make it difficult for us to implement. For example we are currently using a pre-sell type of model where people have to pay first for stands before we service, therefore the question now is will these youths be able to pay for these stands,” said Clr Moyo.

The mayor said council was hoping that if the ministry was issuing such a directive they would also be in a position to give the local authority a grant or avail funds that will enable them to service the stands and not expect them (council) to service the stands using their own funds.

“We have to face reality not to rush to commit ourselves when we know the reality on the ground. What we will await now is for the minister and his delegation to approach us and we tell them that it is simply not possible. Besides I believe as a local authority we are already on a positive in terms of availing stands to our residents. Our housing backlog is just over 100 000 and this is not a crisis figure considering that according to the ZimStat census we are just above 600 000 in terms of population, I doubt whether there is a need to panic,” said the Mayor.

Contacted for comment, Minister Kasukuwere said he was not going to back down on this directive revealing that all was now in place in terms of implementing the project.

“This is a serious project, already I know that Phase 2 in Umvutsha B has already been identified, we want our youths to have stands rather than living all their lives as lodgers. We really expect these local authorities to co-operate knowing provision of accommodation to their residents is one of their key mandates,” said Minister Kasukuwere.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Engineer George Mlilo said everything was now on course but revealed that the said meeting between him, Provincial Affairs Minister Nomthandazo Eunice Moyo and council officials was postponed due to the burial of the national heroines,  Victoria Chitepo and Vivian Mwashita at the National Heroes’ Acre in Harare last week.